El Paso wants to legalize drugs

January 6, 2009 4:50:08 PM PST

EL PASO, TX --

Concerns about the the bloody drug war being fought across the Mexican border have El Paso leaders asking the feds to consider legalizing drugs. El Paso City Councilman Beto O'Rourke today pushed a resolution that asks the U.S. government to start an "open, honest, national dialogue on ending the prohibition of narcotics."

The council unanimously approved the nonbinding resolution.

It suggests that legalizing drugs in the U.S. could help curb a volatile and bloody drug war that claimed nearly 1,600 lives in Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, in 2008. Thousands more were killed across Mexico.

A spokesman for El Paso Congressman Silvestre Reyes, who's a former U.S. Border Patrol agent, said he hasn't seen the resolution and wasn't available for comment.